Will Dyke Hold for Global Religious Patriarchy?

Over the weekend, the Vatican announced it will appoint a special envoy to run and reform The Legionaries of Christ, whose founder Father Marcial Maciel, led a double life for decades.

The now infamous Maciel, who died in 2008 at 87, founded the ultra-conservative Legion of Christ order in Mexico in 1941. Maciel’s influence probably exists to this day in Mexico’s anti-abortion politics.

When Rome mandates that raped nine-year-old girls carrying twins cannot receive a legal abortion, the cultural, religious powerhouse called The Legionaries of Christ, sees to it that the girl is sacrificed, if necessary.

In a 2009 case Archbishop Don Jose Cardoso Sobrinho of Recife excommunicated the doctor, the child’s mother and the medical team involved in a legal abortion, telling Globo TV that, “A graver act than (rape) is abortion, to eliminate an innocent life.”

This prioritization of values around ‘life’ led Father Marcial Maciel to father children, molest young boys and successfully and impressively organize an autocratic reign of worldwide, patriarchal terror.

In yesterday’s announcement the Vatican said that the special envoy and a corollary commission will oversee the “purification” of the order and the “re-definition” of its secretive, militaristic culture.

Maciel “skillfully managed to build up an alibi to gain the trust, confidence and surrounding silence, and strengthen his role as charismatic founder,” the Vatican said. Living “a life devoid of scruples and of genuine religious feeling,” the statement continued, Maciel “created around himself a defense mechanism that made him untouchable for a long time.” via LA Times

Macial was protected by former Vatican secretary of state and, by office, the most powerful man next to Pope John Paul II, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, now the dean of the College of Cardinals and an outspoken defender of Benedict.

“Until Pope Benedict confronts Sodano’s role in the cover-up of Maciel, I don’t see how he can move beyond the crisis that has engulfed his papacy,” Mr. Jason Berry of The National Catholic Reporter said.Berry is the co-author of a book that helped to break open the charges around Maciel.

Berry reported that Cardinal Ratzinger refused an offer of money from the Legionaries, when he inherited the Maciel case as in his role as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Today’s NY Times examines the story, stressing how long it took Cardinal Ratzinger to act on the case, but also implying that Maciel’s powerful supporters, including Pope John !! and Cardinal Sodano, put major stumbling blocks in the way of any investigation.

The 38 Legionaries of Christ deacons ordained June 30, 2009 come from 9 countries: Brazil (2), Canada (2), the Czech Republic (1), Spain (6), Italy (1), Mexico (19), the United States (5), Venezuela (1), and Vietnam (1). The youngest deacon is 29 years old, while the oldest is a 50-year-old Spaniard who is also a physician, a doctor in bioethics, and a professor at the Pontifical Regina Apostolorum College in Rome.Not only were Maciel’s wealth and global influence enormous, his Legionaries of Christ was a major source of new priests in a world where cultivating them is more challenging in developed countries. Maciel operated with an iron fist, delivering young priests worldwide with the ‘right’ values and appropriate level of humility and obedience to authority.

Beyond the horrific nature of the sex abuse cases themselves, is the reality of the Vatican’s global values machine. It is a monstrous influence in the world, assuming that without the patriarchal rod, caring people — many of them priests and nuns — but also a benevolent laity will not show compassion for others.

The Vatican media extravaganza is moving in the direction of analyzing the power structure of the Vatican, even more so than in 2001 with the Boston Globe’s revelations of sex abuse here in America. The Internet age is broadcasting details of how the Vatican operates into homes around the globe.

What we’re experiencing one of the greatest challenge to hierarchy and patriarchal power in history. It is the Internet, conscientious secularists, and thoughtful Catholics that the Vatican condemns, who are leading this effort, supporting the real-life stories of innocent people who believed and trusted their moral leaders.

The story is bigger than abusive, sex-mongering priests, bishops and perhaps a cardinal or two. Indeed, we are going after the patriarchy and its oppressive treatment of believers — whether they are clergy or parishioners.

Our focus is not whether or not Pope Benedict is a good guy or a bad guy. The examination is of the institution and how it operates. At a time when pundits like David Brooks question the damage of secularism on global values, the secularists are beginning to push back, saying ‘enough’.

The hypocrisy is overwhelming, especially at a time when science uncovers increasingly strong evidence that many people are compassionate and don’t require the endless hammer of human’s sinful nature to inspire them to treat others with respect and dignity.

The challenge concerns our essential nature as humans and whether flogging, beating, spanking, demeaning, critiquing, and insisting that we are immoral sinners actually makes us better people. Our focus is the REAL purpose of the patriarchal rod of religion, fundamentalism and orthodoxy.

Kristof Speaks Again: Two Catholic Churches

For the second time in two weeks, Nicholas D. Kristof has written with a passion and language not revealed in his book “Half the Sky”. Just six months ago Kristof was ‘sitting on the religious fence’, unwilling to challenge the way in which religious hierarchy treats women in particular, but poor people generally.

No more. Writing again this weekend:

Maybe the Catholic Church should be turned upside down.

Jesus wasn’t known for pontificating from palaces, covering up scandals, or issuing Paleolithic edicts on social issues. Does anyone think he would have protected clergymen who raped children?

Kristof makes it clear that there are two Catholic churches at work in the world, and he’s passionate in his defense nuns and priests on the ground in Sudan and all over Africa. We honor these caretakers also, especially when they look the other way as condoms from Britain are slipped into the lives of wives whose husbands are infected with AIDS.

In their own documents, the Vatican knows that African women do not say ‘no’ to their husbands, just as they know that there’s a huge problem in Africa with nuns saying ‘no’ to African priests and bishops who demand sex.

Read The Vatican’s own document ‘The Problem of the Sexual Abuse of African Religious in Africa and In Rome.’ It’s a stunner.

Cut the Patriarchal Crap

At the risk of sounding totally disrespectful, many of us are saying to the Conservative patriarchy: Cut the crap.

In a song that began last summer as a quiet humming that I never dreamed could gain serious momentum, voices are speaking out.

The Vatican media machine, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin still have the big megaphones around Christian values. At the same time, the secularists — many of whom are very religious and spiritual — are sick of the guilt and condemnation.

We are nauseous over the hypocrisy of a global morality elite that can’t keep their pants on and are as power-hungry as the dictators they condemn but also befriend.

Can the hum become an opera? Stay tuned. I would have said ‘no’ in July 2009. Now I’m not so sure.  Anne

We covered the Father Marcial Maciel a few months ago:

Vatican News | Legionaries of Christ Investigation Intersects New Sex Abuse Scandals

Marcial Maciel, the Legionaries of Christ, and Regnum Christi

Retaining Moral Authority Is Growing Vatican Challenge